Features / Gluten free
Bristol’s first gluten-free bakery is a long-awaited oasis for people like me
When I arrive at Creamberry Artisan, the newly opened cafe on West Street, Old Market, there is a steady stream of people walking through the door.
The level of interest is unusual, but then again this is no ordinary cafe. It is Bristol’s first dedicated gluten-free bakery – and for people like me that is an incredibly special thing.
I was diagnosed with coeliac disease aged five. Back then, my parents had to ring around five, maybe ten restaurants every time we wanted to eat out to find even one that would do something gluten free. Invariably it was a jacket potato, which I hated.
Bread was prescribed on the NHS, came in triple-wrapped, thick plastic packaging and resembled cardboard.
The idea of a free-from pastry let alone a whole gluten-free bakery was completely unrealistic.
That, I’m sure, is why people are crowding into the green- and pink-hued interior of Creamberry Artisan on a wet Wednesday afternoon.
Jaz Ricketts made a beeline for the bakery on her day out in Bristol
“I have been waiting ten years to have a dedicated gluten-free space and I literally have gone to Sydney for the gluten-free cafe there, and London, and Paris,” coeliac Amara Jenkins says.
“So to have one in the home town is special.”
Jaz Ricketts, who went gluten free in 2019, says back then “choices were terrible”.
“There were some mostly good supermarket options but I don’t think there was anything mind-blowingly good. I feel like all the good-quality stuff like pizzas and doughnuts have all come out in the last few years.
Ricketts, who lives in London but is visiting Bristol for the day, says going to the bakery was “the first thing on my list”.
“There’s choices,” she says. “And going somewhere that’s dedicated gluten free feels so much safer.”
This isn’t the first gluten-free bakery in the world. Indeed, mainland Europe has had them for years. The recent opening of Parisian company Copains in London drew wide admiration mixed with awe at how you could spend £34 on just three items.
“It is a way to rip off people,” says Creamberry Artisan co-owner Volkan Abak. “When we look at other gluten-free places everything is really posh, as though they are selling diamonds. We saw some people selling even two bites of tiramisu for £8 in a free-from show. I think it’s being a bit greedy.”
Abak’s own prices are far more reasonable, despite the high price of coeliac-friendly food.
“Gluten-free flour is four times as expensive as plain flour,” he says. “(But) we aren’t selling diamonds or pearls or jewels. Special diet needs doesn’t need to be a rip-off area.”
Queues stretched out the door at times with customers keen to try food they hadn’t had in years
The shop is a big step up for a business that started its life in home cooking and pop-ups.
“We were baking in the annex of our garden for six years,” Abak said. “We were going to markets, festivals – more than 600 in six years.
“When (Özlem, his partner) was pregnant, she was baking and going to the markets and festivals from day one till now. Even when she gave birth, two days later she was baking Basque cheesecakes.
May, when the pair were fitting out the cafe while working markets and looking after their three-year-old, was an exceptionally busy month.
“In some weekends we had five festivals; one hour’s sleep,” Abak says.
“When we came from London’s Free From (Festival) we baked until 5am, set our alarm and woke up at 6am, drove for three hours to London – and that weekend we had three more festivals.”
The couple clearly enjoy a challenge and that extends to the menu.
“We discovered that we love to make very impossible items,” Abak said. “We nearly have ten countries’ food on our menu and we love to change them gluten free.”
With spanakopita, empanadas, Basque cheesecake and focaccia in the display cabinets, the result is food that coeliacs may well never have tried.
It’s a refreshing change from the gluten-free brownies that it seems everyone does, and gives me the chance to try my first ever pastel de nata.
Making all these dishes gluten free isn’t easy, but for Volkan and Özlem “it’s always a try and failing. It’s a challenge.”
“It’s really a passion and dedication to solve the problem.”
Well, thank God for people like the Abaks. After decades of watching others eat what I cannot, this bakery is the thing that I, and others, have dreamed of for years.
All photos: Molly Pipe
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